Why POS monitoring requires integrated video surveillance

Many point of sale (POS) companies advertise their monitoring and reporting functions. While these are essential POS features, they are presented without context. Was the void yesterday a sign of employee theft or a customer changing their mind? The fact is POS monitoring without video can’t tell you.

That’s why POS monitoring and reporting need the context provided by paired video. Learn how Solink’s POS integrations improve the operational efficiency of your business.

To see how Solink pairs video with POS data, sign up for a demo today.

What is POS monitoring?

POS monitoring is a form of real-time surveillance. Many point of sale (POS) solutions give companies the ability to keep an eye on their transaction data in real time.

POS monitoring vs. POS reporting

While POS monitoring refers to the ability to keep an eye on transaction data, POS reporting refers to the data visualization capabilities of your point of sale.

Most POS systems offer basic dashboarding functionality that allows you to see how your business is doing relative to the previous day, week, or month.

POS monitoring limitations

The main limitation of standard POS monitoring is the lack of context. While certain transactions can be considered high risk for POS employee theft, even these transactions are usually legitimate.

Here are some examples of high-risk transactions:

• Voids
• No-sale till opens
• Manager and/or employee discounts
• Cash refunds
• Discounts over a set dollar or percentage limit

While all of these high-risk transactions need to be investigated to reduce employee theft, any one transaction is unlikely to be due to employee theft.

Solink integrates your video surveillance system with your POS system without a test inserter box. This solves the major problem with built in POS monitoring. Now, instead of looking at numbers on the screen and trying to understand whether theft occurred, you can watch the video of the transaction.

By allowing you to filter transactions using multiple key terms, Solink saves time when performing loss prevention audits. Now you can look at only the highest-risk transactions with context provided by the matching video.

To see how Solink helps reduce employee theft at the POS, sign up for a demo today.

Types of POS monitoring

POS monitoring can mean a lot of different things. That’s one of the reasons it is so difficult to find helpful tips to improve your business monitoring.

Here are some of the things people mean when they mention POS monitoring:

• POS security monitoring
• POS transaction monitoring
• Remote POS monitoring
• Real-time service and revenue monitoring
• POS terminal monitoring
• Loss prevention/asset protection monitoring

POS security monitoring

Cybersecurity and physical security are both important components of securing your POS.

PCI compliance is imperative for a business to succeed. Any issues with network, Wi-Fi, or connect software could jeopardize a business’s ability to accept debit or credit card transactions. With the rise of the cashless society, few businesses could survive without accepting digital transactions.

Solink takes security very seriously. That’s why we recently achieved SOC 2 Type II certification.

To see all the ways Solink keeps your data safe, sign up for a demo today.

POS transaction monitoring

POS transaction monitoring usually refers to software designed to keep track of online transactions. This is the process of making sure that all of the different software and businesses involved in an online transaction are working correctly to minimize the number of bounced or fraudulent transactions.

Remote POS monitoring

Remote POS monitoring

Real-time monitoring of your store’s metrics allows you to make quick changes before a small problem becomes a major issue. This is easy when you are on-site managing a single location.

However, when you are overseeing many locations, you need to be able to monitor your POS remotely. This is where remote video monitoring becomes valuable.

Remote POS monitoring and reporting with Solink’s integrated video surveillance allows you to see what is actually happening in your business from anywhere, anytime.

To see what Solink’s remote video monitoring can do for your business, sign up for a demo today.

Real-time service and revenue monitoring

Solink’s Dashboard is fully customizable so each widget provides insight into the metrics that matter most to your business. Whether its speed of service, hourly revenue, or the number of transactions per hour, you can see exactly how your locations are performing in real time.

Now, Threshold Notifications gives you proactive POS monitoring. Simply set limits on your metrics and get an alert whenever they are outside of your comfort zone.

POS terminal monitoring

Some large retail locations have multiple checkout locations. This form of POS monitoring helps you understand and optimize the efficiency of your business.

Here’s a quick example.

You have a main checkout counter at the front entrance of your store, a second one in a boutique area, and a third set of POS systems by the mall exit. Through POS terminal monitoring, you see that there have been 60% more transactions over the last hour through the mall entrance terminals than those by the main entrance. You can then shift one of your employees from the main entrance to a POS by the mall entrance to maintain your desired speed of service.

Loss prevention/asset protection POS monitoring

Voids, no-sale till opens, manager and/or employee discounts, cash refunds, and discounts over a set dollar or percentage limit are all considered high-risk transactions.

For that reason, they are often monitored by loss prevention/asset protection (LP/AP) professionals. However, as mentioned above, even though a manager’s discount could be a sign of employee theft, it is usually a legitimate transaction.

So, how do you perform LP/AP POS monitoring? How can you tell a legitimate POS transaction from internal theft?

The fact is that you can’t with just the numbers on your POS terminal. They look exactly the same. The only way to see whether a high-risk transaction is actually a sign of employee theft is to watch video of the transaction.

By pairing your POS data with video footage, Solink allows you to see exactly what happened. Events-based search makes it easy to find the video footage you need in seconds without spending hours manually matching a clip to the right transaction.

Solink enables POS video monitoring

POS monitoring is a method of reviewing the data provided by your point of sale in real time. This is a necessary business process to make sure everything is going smoothly.

However, numbers on a screen never reveal the whole story.

Solink pairs video with every transaction. That way you can see exactly what is happening in all of your locations.

To see how Solink makes POS video monitoring possible, sign up for a demo today.